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The ChurchActs 2:42-47l; 4:32-37February 22, 2018We continue this week our study of the Apostles Creed. We come this week to the church. You may know that the traditional translation of the portion of the creed speaks of the “holy catholic church.” Before we get started, let me give you a little history and grammar lesson on the word Catholic.1. Catholic. When we hear the term, we tend to think of The Roman Catholic Church. However, that is not the intent of this creed.If you look at the graphic on Power Point you can see what I mean. The word “catholic” comes from two Greek words. Kata means according to or with respect to. Holos means whole or entire. When the two words are put together they mean “universal” or “entire”. This creed affirms that there is one church. “Catholic” does not mean that part of Christendom with the name Roman Catholic. It means that God has made for himself a community of believers. This community began long before us and will continue into the future. Churches that come from all nations and which speak many languages are really members of the one universal church.To avoid confusion Protestants usually put in the place of “catholic” a word like “universal” or “Christian.” It is the sum total of all who trust in Jesus Christ as Savior.We affirm that there is one universal church, which is made up of the fellowship of all true believers from all time. This universal church is never seen all at once. We become a member of it at our 2nd birth and we participate in it through some local part of it. Bethany is part of this church.2. Sequence. Next, as we think about the creed. It moves from God the Father, to Jesus the Son, to the Holy Spirit to the church. There is a logic to that sequence. Salvation is initiated by God the Father, it was accomplished by the Son and it is applied to us by the Holy Spirit. At the preaching of the Gospel, a person believes, is born again, from above, by the Spirt of God and is joined to the church of Jesus.The Holy Spirit unites believers in order to learn, to love, to worship and to share the good news with the world. All who belong to Jesus also belong to his church. I. Five Marks of the Church – Acts 2:42-47Following the Ascension of Jesus to the Father, he sent the Spirit. Upon the coming of the Spirit, Peter preached the first sermon of the church. When he finished, the people said “what shall we do?” Jesus called them to turn in faith to Jesus. Thus the Christian Church was born. After 3000 believed and were baptized, we read this:42?And?they devoted themselves to the apostles'?teaching and the?fellowship, to?the breaking of bread and the prayers.?43?And awe?came upon every soul, and?many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.?44?And all who believed were together and?had all things in common.?45?And?they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.?46?And day by day,?attending the temple?together and?breaking bread in their homes, they received their food?with glad and generous hearts,?47?praising God and?having favor with all the people. And the Lord?added to their number?day by day those who?were being saved.If we were to meet a group of people, how would we know that they are part of the church? What evidence do we look for. We could look for things like church buildings, pews, candles and artistic stained glass windows. We could look for instruments and song books. We could look for men wearing suits and ties. We could look for a pastor. Those are all things you will find around churches, but they are not the evidence that you have come to a true church.Today I want to talk about five evidences of this thing called the church. We find these in the passage from Acts 2.Believers. When we look back a few verses into Chapter 2, we find this. There was a crowd in Jerusalem for the feast of the Fifty Days – Pentecost. 140 disciples of Jesus had been waiting there as Jesus said. They were gathered together in prayer. Then the Holy Spirit came down in the visible form of flames which came upon each one there – men and women. They began to pray and to testify. And so people who were from all over the world were there, and they heard the believers speaking in their other languages. Then they heard Peter speak. He told them the message of Jesus death and resurrection. At the end of his sermon he invited them to. On that day 3000 people believed and were baptized in water. Some presentations of the Gospel fail to mention the church. They might speak of that Jesus died for us and was raised for us. But they fail to mention that we come to Jesus to receive life and that we also become part of a community called the church. The church of Jesus should not be an afterthought. It is made up of all the men, women and children who have believe that Jesus who suffered, died, was buried and raised from the dead.Verse 44 says “and all who believers were together…” Kevin Giles in his book called “What on earth is the church” says that the most common name used for the church in the book of Acts is “the believers.” Belief is the first requirement for membership in the church of God. You could be here as a believer in Jesus. But perhaps you have not joined the church as a member. We at Bethany have a process to become an official member. Since we do not know for sure who is a member of God’s universal church, we ask for members to confess their faith in Jesus. So you could think that you are not a member. Yet, if you are a believer, you are a member already.Our first congregation was in New York. One couple had been part of church for decades. They never joined as members of that local church. It turned out that the man had been in the German Merchant Marine when Hitler came to power. So he chose to jump overboard and swim to the USA in New York harbor. All the way from the late 1930s to the 1980s he lived here, he worked and paid taxes. But he did not like to put his name on documents. I did not ask if he had papers. They never joined that church. Yet both were believers in Jesus. When they believed they became members of the church of Jesus.You could also be here and a member of this church, because you fooled us by your testimony. But if you do not believe, you are not a member of the church of God. Some people speak of the Invisible Church – they mean that we can never be sure who is and is not in the church of Jesus – we can only see the part we are in, and we can only make reasonable guesses about who is a believer. The Invisible church is made visible in local gatherings and in gatherings of churches. But we only see part. Learners. “They dedicated themselves to the apostles teaching…” A church is a community of learners. We might talk about lots of things. I could tell you about the 16 species of birds we have seen in our yard this spring. That is not what the church is about. We should be dedicated to the message received from the Apostles. We find, for example, when Paul was writing to Timothy, a leader of the 2nd generation of the church, he told him to “guard the gospel.” Acts 6 recoreds a problem. The church took over the care of the needy in their midst, specifically widows who had no income. It goes to a point where the Apostles could not continue their work of teaching. So they appointed responsible Servants to wait at the tables. That way the Apostles could focus on two things: prayer and the ministry of the word.This does not teach that the only thing we do is to teach. Because when we hear the word, we need to keep it. It was not wrong that the church took care of widows, it would only be wrong if they neglected the teaching and learning ministry of the church.So we need to keep the scriptures in front of us. We have the teaching of the Prophets in the form of the Old Testament and the teaching of the Apostles preserved in the New Testament. There is enough material there to keep all of us busy for a life time.The true church should be dedicated to teaching and observing what is in the Scriptures.Love. The Fellowship of the church means that people come into a community where they know each other and care for one another.Some people say that you cannot do that in a large church – it is I suppose easier to sneak in and out unnoticed in a large church. But I have seen people in a small church worship in the same place for decades and still not know the names of people who sit on the other side of the aisle.The word fellowship translated a word, koininia, which means “what we have in common.” If we are in a social club, we have social things in common. Maybe you all bowl or knit. That is fine. That and your friendship is what you have in common.The church is not a social club. What we have together is not that we are all alike and all doing the same things and think the same way. The church is a community that shares Jesus and the richness of his salvation.So there should be affection in the church, the affection that comes from being in the same family. There would be a spiritual connection – when we share our needs and prayers with each other. Or when we share the good news of how God has worked in our lives. Also, as the earliest church showed, the love they had was expressed in sharing their material possessions. Verse 45 shows that they had a voluntary opportunity to share their possessions. They did not give up their private property. But when there was a need, or when the Lord moved someone, it was common for someone to give to the fellowship generously. And then if there was someone with a material need, that was shared.You cannot judge whether a church is living in true fellowship by its size. But a true church will richly share with each other in both spiritual and material ways. When someone is part of a church to be seen or to make connections for their business, or to get what they need without giving, then they are not in fellowship. Fellowship is sharing the gifts of Jesus with each other.Worship. V. 42 speaks of breaking of bread and prayers. I believe that this speaks of sharing the Lord’s Supper and common times of worship. Sometimes breaking bread only refers to a meal. It could mean that the earliest church had fellowship meals. Our first congregation did not believe in eating at church. It was messy. So they only had food two times a year – at Christmas there was a desert event. At the church anniversary there was a meal of cold cut sandwiches and cake. In no case did any cake have frosting – such “schmutz” as they called it, the German word for butter or fat, was too messy. Every other church I know of has meals together. For we get to know each other over eating. The family meal is an important time to communicate as a family. The church potluck is an important time to meet and talk.Others say that the breaking of bread is the Lord’s Supper. And there are other references to breaking bread, which clearly tie it to the Lord’s Supper.One thing we know is that the earliest churches had meals together and as part of that meal they shared the Lord’s Supper. The true church will be a church of worship. Worship includes elements such as scripture reading and instruction (i.e. Sermon), Prayers (from praise to intercession, and singing. We are not ever given an order of service. We are not told how often to have communion. We are not told to have only certain kinds of music. All of those details can vary. None of them alone define true worship.True worship is scripturally rich, prayerful and includes singing and celebration. Evangelism. Verse 47 concludes this description with this comment. “The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”We have listed these four thins so far: The church is for Believers. It is for Learners. It is a Loving fellowship and it is a community that worships God. The last one is the effect on the world outside of their meeting.Luke reports that in those times the Lord was adding to their number. First of all we need to see that The Lord is in charge of church growth. We can see that Peter preached and 3000 people came to the Lord. But why was it that Peter preached? He had been filled with the Holy Spirit. Why did 3000 come to faith? They have been moved by the Holy Spirit to be sorry for their rejection of Jesus. They felt the guilt of his crucifixion – the crowd after all had cried out “crucify him.”The first Christian church was the result of the Spirit. The ongoing growth of the church is also the result of the Holy Spirit at work. It is through the preparing of the people on the outside to hear the Gospel that they will respond to a preacher. It is through the enabling of the Holy Spirit that the preachers will preach the gospel.And much of the grown came not from the leaders but from the community. When they went home they took Jesus with them. When they went to work, they took the life of the Gospel with them. They were, as Jesus said, lights in the world.An authentic church will see people come to the Lord and become part of the community and grow into maturity is Christians.The Holy Spirit unites believers in order to learn, to love, to worship and to share the good news with the world. All who belong to Jesus also belong to his church. ................
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